Founded in 1824 as the first school of medicine in the southeastern U.S., theMedical University of South Carolina (MUSC)is the state’s largest medical complex and the largest employer in the metropolitan Charleston area with about 10,000 employees. A freestanding academic health center, MUSC is the only tertiary/quaternary care referral center in South Carolina. Located in downtown Charleston, MUSC is licensed for 750 hospital beds. Its health care teams at the main downtown campus and at satellite locations throughout the coastal regions of South Carolina experience more than 950,000 outpatient visits a year.

Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, MUSC offers professional education at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels. MUSC awards more than 800 degrees annually within its six colleges – Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, Graduate Studies, Health Profession and Dental Medicine.

MUSC is also South Carolina’s lead biomedical research institution, with more than $234M in research funding in 2010. More than $136M of that amount was from the National Institutes of Health.